Sunday, July 3, 2016

Straight on Till Morning (1972)

More unpleasant than
unsettling, Straight on Till Morning
is an atypical offering from UK’s Hammer Films, because even though it has
gruesome elements, the picture is a slowly paced psychological thriller rather
than an outright horror show. Straight on
Till Morning is not the only movie Hammer made in this vein, but it
compares poorly to, say, Crescendo
(1970), which packs a sexy punch. It’s also hard to defend the way this film
utilizes iconography associated with J.M. Barrie’s classic Peter Pan character,
since the various allusions that are made to Barrie’s work seem arbitrary and
perverse. Linking fairy-tale storytelling to horrific subject matter has worked
well in other contexts, but here, the device merely seems distasteful and opportunistic.
Anyway, the plot begins when plain-looking twentysomething Brenda (Rita
Tushingham) leaves her working-class mom in Liverpool to seek adventure and
romance in London. Hopelessly naïve, Brenda talks quite a bit about wanting a
baby, and her interest in motherhood, combined with her suffocating loneliness,
makes her easy prey for predatory men. Sure enough, Brenda falls into a twisted
relationship with Peter (Shane Briant), a fair-haired psychopath who insists on
calling each of his lovers “Wendy.” (Pushing the Peter Pan allusion even
further, he calls his yappy little dog “Tinker.”)

The suspense of the piece,
such as it is, stems from the question of whether Brenda will realize she’s in
danger before falling victim to Peter’s weapon of choice, a retractable utility
knife. On the plus side, writer John Peacock and director Peter Collinson take
their time with scenes that straddle the line between character development and
mood-building; although the filmmakers fail to properly illuminate the
psychology of the people within the movie, a strong sense of the characters’
everyday lives comes across, so we get the context if not the substance. For
instance, the filmmakers take lingering looks at Brenda’s job in a clothing
store, her problematic acquaintance with a beautiful blonde gal pal, and Brenda’s
generalized anxiety about life. Tushingham engages her role earnestly, wringing
a bit of pathos from the malnourished script, and Briant is acceptable as the
far-eyed, poetic murderer. Yet there’s a big so-what factor here, and the arty,
fragmented editing style that renders the movie’s first half-hour borderline
incoherent does not add to the overall appeal of Straight on Till Morning.